Prepare for the Underground Church - Part 2 — Eric Foley

Marx grew up in a Christian home, but as he finished high school, even actually during high school, he wrote a book that was a book about discipleship, Christian discipleship. But Karl Marx had some kind of experience that he never shared.

But whatever that experience was, it completely changed his attitude towards God. But here's the key point. Karl Marx didn't become an atheist. Karl Marx became a Satanist. And so he writes this series of writings, both autobiography, and he also wrote these very strange dramas, plays.

And in it, he shared things like this. Karl Marx said, I will live in order to get my revenge against God. And so in his earliest writings, his writings weren't filled with discussions of communism and factory workers overthrowing capitalists.

They were filled with the most amazing hatred against God. And this repeated vow, promise, that with his life, he would destroy God. So Pastor Wurmbrand wrote a book called Marx and Satan. Unfortunately, it's not available yet in Korean.

That's one of our list of words we have to translate. But it is available in English. And in it, he carefully documents this information. And so what Pastor Wurmbrand showed was that persecution against Christians in communist countries wasn't simply political in nature.

It was very bizarre and targeted not only to try to cause Christians not to believe, but to destroy what God had created. This is part of the reason why the World Council of Churches didn't like Pastor Wurmbrand.

Because they tended to be favorable towards communism, socialism. And so they sought to try to portray that Pastor Wurmbrand was some kind of crazy man. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, more and more documents became public that confirmed that those who were at the heart of the communist enterprise, the communist focus, were not atheists.

They were focused on destroying the church. And they believed that it could be destroyed through this political or military means of communism. So of course, most of you will remember growing up here in Korea, being in school and going through the drills that you had to go through to be prepared for an attack from North Korea.

The training you received of turning in anyone who was a stranger because they might be a spy. And so the battle against communism was difficult. Of course, it was costly in terms of lives. But ultimately, that battle was largely won.

Now again, we shouldn't say it was completely won, because as I mentioned, there are still countries that are communist. But what I'm trying to emphasize is that the whole world was focused on that battle between communism and the free world.

And the enemy was clear because the enemy was out there. It was behind the Iron Curtain. But what Pastor Wurmbrandt saw that other people did not see at that time was that Marxism was not only a political movement that happened behind the Iron Curtain.

It was also a cultural movement. And so especially in Europe, beginning 80 years ago, cultural Marxists began to ask the question, would there be an even more effective way of destroying Christianity than through politics or military strength?

All of those writings are publicly available. And it's those writings that Pastor Wurmbrandt began to read, readings from cultural schools of thought like the French Surrealists, who wrote things like this.

This is a direct quote. Only the sexual revolution is capable of destroying the church. And so that movement began to spread from Europe to the United States. It began to move into education, especially in universities.

It began to move into filmmaking. And this group of cultural Marxists believed that it would be far more effective to destroy the church, not through political means, but through cultural ones. And so the process by which that happened is amazing.

We go into detail more in the book, but just to summarize a few things about it, is that this idea of a sexual revolution wasn't simply accomplished by handing out pornography, or making movies that showed naked people having sex.

If it was that kind of a battle, it would be fairly easy to oppose. And that's the way the church has perceived the battle so far. But that's not the way the battle was fought. What happened was that cultural Marxists sought to establish the legitimacy or the credibility of the sexual revolution through science.

And so what that means is that you remember the period called the Enlightenment in scientific history. Prior to the Enlightenment, at the beginning of the field of science, actually Christians were quite involved in that in the early church.

And literally for more than a thousand years, Christians embraced science as a means of coming to try to understand better how God worked in the world. They used scientific tools to answer the question, what was the purpose for it?

Science had always affirmed that the purpose of sex was to produce children. But in the Enlightenment, what happened was that what was excluded from science was the question of purpose. Beginning in the Enlightenment, scientists could no longer ask the question, what is the purpose for something?

Science began to say that the only thing you could study scientifically was you could observe natural phenomenon and detail your observation. And so as science started to focus on sex in the early 20th century, it said it is not possible to study sex scientifically with the idea that the purpose of sex is to have children.

The question of purpose had to be excluded from the study. And that meant that sex had to be studied with no purpose at all. And so scientists began to study sex in this way. They studied it as what you might call vital energy, or sex drive.

And as scientists began to study sex in this way, they began to develop theories that said that anything that interfered or restrained the sex drive or the vital energy created mental illness. So science began to proclaim, as scientific, the idea that it was important for sexuality not to be restrained in any way.

Because sex was to have no purpose scientifically, it became simply an expression of energy that made people feel happy and joyful. And so anything that restrained the practice of sex, restrained happiness, it created guilt, it created shame, and ultimately then it caused what in science is called neuroses, or basic kind of mental illness.

So science began to support this idea of the free expression of sexuality. And so this idea of the sexual revolution didn't just become about distributing pornography, it didn't just become about showing dirty movies, it became a quest to free people from the oppression of morality, so they could experience true mental health.

So things that the Christian church has always affirmed as important morality, things like not having sex before marriage, things like not living together before marriage, things like marriage being the union between a man and a woman, things like sex being between a man and a woman, even things as basic as our own identity as men and women, these things didn't just become religious beliefs anymore in terms of the general public.

They became oppression. They became the way that the church even caused people to commit suicide. By restraining the release of their sexual energy, by denying them the basic opportunity to be happy, this helps us understand why the issue of the sexual revolution, all of these things related to sexual activity, isn't just a sexual sin that the Korean church can preach against and evangelize about.

It's not just that we have a different set of morality than the general public, it's that we, the church, have been identified as the problem. We are the oppressors. This is why the sexual revolution won't simply leave the church alone.

It is impossible in the sexual revolution for the church to be just left to believe what it has always believed. We have to be restrained. We have to be stopped from sharing publicly these things that we share about morality.

Because we are portrayed as the source of the world's suffering. That's what makes the sexual revolution different than any other attack against the church. In any other attack against the church, we can end that attack simply by agreeing to believe differently than the society at large.

We can have different beliefs about things like creation and evolution, and society thinks we're crazy, but it doesn't cause them to restrain us. We can have different beliefs about, for example, the existence of God as compared to atheism, but it doesn't cause society to try to restrain us.

It causes them to think that we're childish and silly, but they don't have to restrict our belief or our speech about that. This is what makes the sexual revolution such a brilliant attack on the church.

It's not just a debate with the world about different values. It's that we are the one oppressive force in society because we advocate this different morality. So when we say, for example, that sex has a purpose, we are making an oppressive claim.

When we say that homosexuality is a sin, society says we are causing even teenagers to commit suicide. So you see this already happening in Korea. You may recall late last year, Yonsei University elected as its student council president a lesbian.

But the woman who was a lesbian, when they asked her, they said, how was your situation as a lesbian in Korea? Did you face struggles? She said, yes, because of the church. You see, it's not just about different values.

It is the claim that our values are hurting and killing people. And so the students who were Christian students at Yonsei University, who, by the way, Yonsei is traditionally a Christian school, not quite as much of a Christian school anymore, but it was the Christian students at Yonsei that denounced the church.

It was the Christian students at Yonsei that said, yes, the problem is the church. The church has to change, they said. So it wasn't just the student body at large. It was the Christian students. And this is the same thing that we saw happen in Europe and the United States.

The advocates for the sexual revolution which, again, we're not simply talking about homosexuality and gay marriage. We're talking about things like easy divorce laws. The idea that marriage is for our self-fulfillment and for our happiness.

The idea that you should not live together before you're married. The idea that you should not have sex before you're married. The people who advocate a different morality are always explaining that we are the problem.

And so what happened to churches in Scandinavia at the epicenter of this change, the state churches who receive their funding from the state. They don't receive their funding from offerings like churches in Korea.

Everyone pays a tax and that funds the church. And so as the governments in Scandinavia supported this sexual revolution, they said, yes, there should be no restraint upon sexual expression. Any restraint on sexual expression is harmful.

Anytime that anyone says that any kind of sex is sinful, it causes mental problems for people, grief and suffering and pain. So the governments in the Scandinavian countries went to the state churches and they said, what do you think about homosexuality?

What do you think about gay marriage? And the state churches said, well, Christianity has always been against it. But the governments handed them the Bible and they said, we think you should check again.

Remember, the government pays the bills. And so the state churches said, you know, it's amazing. Actually, as we read the Bible again, all of the things that you're talking about, they're all in here.

Gay marriage is here. Homosexuality is affirmed. Living together is no problem. Because the greatest expression of Christian morality is love. So the churches in the Scandinavian countries became partners in the sexual revolution.

And the evangelical churches that resisted that theology began to face many different kinds of problems, which we talk about in the book. But when the same thing came to the United States, what became added in to attack the church was social media.

So any church that was suspected of upholding traditional Christian morality, being against gay marriage, being against homosexuality, they were exposed as homophobic. Those people were considered hateful, harmful.

And any celebrity or athlete or famous person who was associated with a church like that was told that they had to either leave that church or face the destruction of their church. And so even that social force began to have an impact on the church.

Christian celebrities began to say, no, when I read the Bible, it says love. Love is the most important virtue. And we believe that God supports the expression of love between any two people who really love each other.

Cultural Pressure on the Korean Church

So why is the sexual revolution especially threatening to Korea? Yeah. Well, in Europe, the church gave in so easily because of the close relationship it has with the government. And of course, here in Korea, the church has traditionally had a very strong relationship with the government.

So we can expect the government to pressure the Korean church in ways that support the government's agenda. We might say, well, why would the Korean government care about favoring homosexuality or gay marriage or any of this kind of thing?

And you'll see that answer in detail more in the book. But there are a few reasons why. One is because the European countries and the United States put increasing amounts of pressure on other countries in the free world to carry out those same values.

So for example, in Africa this past year, countries were told by the United States, unless you change your view on sexuality and affirm homosexuality and gay marriage, you can expect to receive less aid from countries like the United States and Europe.

So what we saw in Europe, we can expect to see in Korea. But in the United States, what we saw in social media is small compared to the kind of outrage and personal destruction that happens through social media in Korea.

The Korean church also has a strong reliance upon celebrity Christians. And the connection between the Korean government and the Korean entertainment industry is simply unique in the world. So the Korean government has more than a $1 billion fund that they use to support the development of Korean drama and K-pop.

So when you think about how homogeneous Korean culture is, imagine what will happen the first time in a Korean drama or a K-pop show that someone who is homosexual is portrayed as the hero sympathetically.

Imagine what happens when celebrity Korean Christians begin to affirm that the Bible is all about love. The ability for Korean society to change almost overnight is there. In the U .S., we were surprised at how in a matter of 10 years, this change happened.

But in Korea, it's set up to happen much more quickly. And our concern isn't about Korean society, Korean government, Korean laws. I mean, those things are important, but it's not our focus. Our focus is on the Korean church and helping the Korean church to stay faithful.

But one of the things that you'll find probably hardest to read about this book is the discussion of how the Korean church has in many ways already given in to many aspects of the sexual revolution. Remember how Jesus said about removing the splinter from your neighbor's eye?

He said you first have to remove the plank from your own eye. Now remember, what is a splinter? It's just a small piece of the wood that came from the plank. What I mean by that is homosexuality is not a different sin than other sins.

It's part of a whole group of sins that focus on how we understand our relationship to our own bodies. And so the concern that we ought to have for the Korean church, the first step in the process of this battle has to be helping the Korean church to understand how it is already participating in the sexual revolution.

But this means that we have to be willing to look at ourselves and see how we are already participating. It's much easier if we see the sexual revolution as a problem out there that we don't participate in.

But when we begin to think about how as Korean Christians we view things like marriage and our own bodies, we begin to see that there really is a plank sticking out of our own eye. Now the things I'm about to say, I don't say it by way of condemning anyone.

Repentance is not about condemnation. It's God's grace that turns on the light in the darkness. And it helps us to see we're about to walk over the edge of a cliff. So in this book, some of the things that we talk about relate to what are the repentances that we as a Korean church need to understand.

One of the things we found amazing was when we looked at the Bible we found yes, there are verses that make clear that homosexuality is a sin. But it's only a splinter that's related to this larger plank.

So what is that plank? What is the root sin? The answer is that the root sin is that we see our bodies as vehicles for our own self-expression. It's the most natural way in the world to think. In the free world we've been taught over the last 80 years that that's what our bodies are, our means of self-expression.

So the amount of time that we spend on that self-expression the amount of money that we spend on that expression and the ways that we express ourselves are things that we have to remember are considered to be sin in the Bible.

In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul says this Your bodies are not your own. They are not for you or me to be able to express our self-expression. Our bodies are designed for one purpose. And that purpose goes back to Genesis 1 and that is to express the image of God.

So the plank that's in our eye is that we consider our bodies to belong to ourselves. So how we dress the words we say how we choose to think about marriage our attitudes are actually no different than the sexual revolution because we both have the same root which is that our bodies are really like pieces of clay that we can shape and mold to express something about our personality.

And so as Christians we have to look and ask the question do we really look much different than the rest of the world? Do we talk much different? Are our marriages and our rates of divorce much different?

The unfortunate answer to this question is no. Because interestingly the Bible has a lot to say about how our bodies can express the image of God. Some are the things that we just dismissed because we thought they were outdated.

Where Paul says things like women should not wear expensive clothes or a lot of jewelry or braided hair. I don't want you to hear me saying oh he was condemning people who colored their hair. What I'm asking us to consider is are we taking seriously the idea that when people look at us that what they should see is not the image of a Korean actor or actress or fashion person but the image of God.

The same thing is true with marriage. In Genesis chapter 1 it says God created humans in his image. Male and female he created there. Interestingly he doesn't say God created men in the image of God and God created women in the image of God.

He says God creates men and women joined together.

To fully bear his image.

That means that none of us whether man or woman can fully express the image of God. But that the union between man and woman in Christian marriage is capable of expressing that image fully. It is accompanied by a sign.

That sign is that when men and women join together in sex life is produced. In this way it images God as Trinity. So the father pours himself out fully to the son. The son pours himself out fully to the father.

But what is shared between them isn't simply love but the fullness of God known as the Holy Spirit. So when the Bible says that when husband and wife become married they become one flesh has always had two meanings for the church.

One is yes the husband and wife join together show the image of God in a complete way but the second is that the two then give birth to one flesh which is the child. So this is what is unique about the Christian understanding of marriage and that's why marriage is so important.

None of these teachings are new they are things that as the church we've known for 2000 years. Because of our culture we're taught to set them aside. So Christians don't much marry anymore for the sake of bearing the image of God fully.

They marry for their own happiness or self-fulfillment the way the rest of the world does. Christians don't much think about how to dress anymore to bear the image of God rather than the image of popular culture.

But those things that the Bible teaches about for example dressing modestly, not wearing expensive designer clothes not spending all of your money on your hair those are actually spiritual disciplines.

They're not simply crazy legalistic ideas they literally are spiritual disciplines. They're ways that we learn to use our body not to express ourselves and our personality but through these disciplines we learn how to express the image of God.

And I'm not only talking about women in Proverbs for example it says that grey hair is a crown of righteousness that the Lord gives. We don't much like grey hair but we always want to cover it up. We want to cover it up so that we look young.

We say things like, oh but we shouldn't walk around with grey hair because otherwise people will think that Christians are poor or not successful or not blessed. But the Bible doesn't say, hey make sure that you don't walk around with grey hair because people will think badly of God if you do.

It says grey hair is a crown of righteousness God likes grey hair. It actually serves a theological purpose. Each of these things that we're talking about things like the clothes you wear, your hair they're ways that God shows things about himself into the world.

Now you say, well that sounds very silly but let me just challenge you like this if it's so silly then why does it scare us so much to think about doing it? Why are we so terrified about the idea of appearing in public without makeup?

Why are pastors so terrified by the idea of letting their hair show as grey? Why are we so terrified to say when people look at us instead of seeing our designer clothing they should see our good deeds?

See that's what I'm talking about is that there are basic challenges here for every single one of us in this room in terms of the relationship we have to our own bodies. Do we work out and exercise because we believe the body is a temple?

Or do we work out and exercise because we want people to look at us and see us as physically fit and good looking? Why do we have plastic surgery? Is it because it helps us to better express the image of God?

Or is it because we believe that if we don't we will suffer for that and not get the jobs we want or the spouses we want in this culture? So we have to ask ourselves those questions. Why are we doing these things?

And remember this is all happening in a society, this culture which in every single survey of people around the world ranks as one of the unhappiest countries to live in. In this country where the rate of suicide is higher than any other country among what group is suicide growing the fastest?

Among young women where the rate of suicide has increased 400 in the last generation. Unilever, the famous beauty company, they own a lot of different brands.

Like beauty stuff.

Perfumes, soaps, everything, cleaning products, cosmetics. They do surveys of women all around the world and they ask the question, are you beautiful? Now around the world less than 2 of women answer yes.

And that number continues to decline with every survey. So maybe these things aren't so silly or small after all. So if we say why did God create human beings the answer the bible gives is to bear his image to make it so that whoever looks at us sees him.

And that whoever looks at a husband and wife, a married Christian couple sees him fully. If we are going to win the battle against the sexual revolution you know the one strategy, the only strategy that European churches and American churches didn't try repenting.

Repenting about the church's own participation in the sexual revolution. Repenting for throwing off, setting aside the only calling that God gave to us which is to bear his image to make it so that when people look at us we look different than everyone else in Korea and by different I don't just mean old, outdated and not stylish.

The only reason we think that way is because our ideas of beauty come from the world and not from God. God says beauty is the full expression of his image. And that doesn't just happen spiritually. It doesn't just happen mentally.

It happens in our bodies as well. So what is the one thing that we have to repent of. What do we need to think differently. We need to think about our bodies differently. We need to see them not as modeling clay but as gifts from God.

Not for the sake of expressing our own self image but for the sake of expressing his. And we have to remember about Christian marriage, the same thing too that marriage is not for our self-fulfillment or our happiness.

In the orthodox church when a man and woman come to be married part of the service is that crowns are placed on their heads. What are those crowns for? They are martyr's crowns. Because marriage has always been understood in the church as a form of green martyrdom.

It is a form of dying to yourself daily. And it is through coming together and dying to ourselves daily that from that is produced children as a sign that God is not only one but three in one. That the two who become one flesh through the birth of children mirror God.

So what does it look like to battle against the sexual revolution? It doesn't look like getting on TV and talking about the medical analysis of homosexuality. It doesn't look like fighting for our rights in court.

It looks like you and me repenting of seeing our bodies as modeling clay for self-creation and our marriages as places for our own fulfillment. And even things like us scheduling when we are going to be able to have children based upon our own convenience.

Practicing Repentance in the Christian Community

So as we finish today and get ready for lunch I want to tell you a story just to give you a little hope. So we were working on this book translating Pastor Wurmbrandt's message and then me writing it and the staff translating my message.

And all of us are being convicted about these things in our own life. So sometimes we have to do an event for Dr. Foley just for women to speak about these things about beauty and the image of God. Because these are difficult issues it can't be done by individuals.

Individuals can't by themselves bear the image of God. It happens in two places. It happens in marriage. And it happens in us joining together as the body of Christ. So those who are single aren't somehow left out of the blessing of marriage.

Because remember marriage is a form of green martyrdom.

Not self-fulfillment.

But those who are single we have to get together and women have to say man how do we live in this Korean society without tons of makeup and designer clothes.

And plastic surgery.

So in the United States groups of Christian women are joining together for things like what they call No Makeup November where for a month they don't wear makeup and at first they're terrified about going to work or going to church.

But what they're finding is it's changing their view of themselves that they're realizing they're not trying to just express their self-image but they're really trying to express God's image through them.

But these are spiritual disciplines not just fashion choices. But you can't do it alone. You have to have a support team doing that. But wow is it giving them opportunities to witness. So as we are translating we're each going through and being convicted by these things.

Hwang Cheon Do Sanim one of our translators whose wife Yu Cheon Do Sanim is also on staff with us I said to him that they have a baby and I said so when are you going to have another baby. And he said well before I started translating this book I thought it'd just be when it was convenient for us to have another one like when my wife was ready and we were making enough money.

But he said now that I've been translating this book I realize that we have to receive children whenever the Lord sends them. And so before you go today make sure to congratulate Hwang Cheon Do Sanim as he and his wife just found out that they're expecting another baby.

And that's what it looks like to battle the sexual revolution. You do it when you wake up in the morning and decide how you're going to dress. You do it every day with your spouse when you decide what the purpose of your marriage is.

You even do it in the planning of your own family even in the roots of your hair. So I'm convinced we can win this battle. But to do it we're going to have to draw upon the knowledge of the persecuted church that's been faced with.

We're going to have to re-read the Bible and look carefully at how we bear the image of God in our bodies and in our marriages. And we're going to have to face a little bit of persecution in the form of ridicule from those as we live out these things.

And people say Christians look weird because saying to a woman, wow you look pale today, you look terrible with that look for the woman to answer back, yeah maybe by worldly standards. But you know as a Christian my job isn't to show the image of the world.

It's to show the image of God through me. That's going to take all of us working together all of our churches, all different denominations and I think it's going to be particularly important for small churches because I have a concern that our large churches may be the first to fall.

I pray they won't but I have a concern about it because the attack will be really focused on them. So we're here to serve you as a resource. We think every Christian should read this book, Preparing for the Immigrant Church.

That's why we offer it free to you. I wish we could just give everybody as many free copies as you wanted. We at least have to cover our costs in doing it so that's why we try to make them as cheap as possible.

So that's what I want to encourage you to do, get copies of the book, read it stay in touch with us, sign up to receive our prayer partner updates. Don't worry we're not sending these to you to ask you for money in our organization.

We don't do that kind of fundraising. If you want to make an offering that's awesome, we're always happy to see it. So there's a box in the back you can make an offering to. We especially love it when you make offerings in cash because one of the things you'll learn in our second book our second book in this series is a three part series.

We're writing them and translating them as fast as we can. So our second part comes out in April and that book is twelve steps that you can take either to plant an underground church or if you're an existing church how to operate as an underground church.

Preparing Churches for Underground Ministry

So one of the reasons why we're always happy to receive cash is already we are experiencing persecution here in this country. So when for example people from other countries try to transfer money to us that money is frozen when we go down to the bank even just to withdraw our own money.

The bank asks us what are you withdrawing this money for?

What's the purpose? Why are you doing this?

And so we are experiencing the first fruits of that. It will not be long until you experience that as well. So when we talk about existing churches going underground we don't mean going into hiding. We mean learning how to function without relying upon the systems that are set up in the world.

So for example for us one of the ways we have to do that is we have to try to make sure that we have as much cash on hand as is necessary to operate this organization for at least about two to three months if we're not able to access our money in the bank.

So the second book that we're writing is full of things like that for us. Our phones are already tapped the police already watch us. The police regularly come in and visit our office and so these are things we are already having to do.

Fortunately right now it's great people still make gifts to our bank and we can access that money. But what we're trying to do is to prepare for things getting worse. And all of the signs now indicate that the next government we have will be probably less favorable to the causes that we are a part of.

So if you're wondering who the next president is going to be if you think about it like that I think that the election that our organization is doing will be very quickly attacked.

So if you want to keep in touch with us.